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I’ve not done one of these interviews in awhile, but an opportunity came up to send some questions to Haley Brown, the LPC candidate who is running against Jason Kenney in the riding of Calgary-Midnapore. If there was ever a Cabinet Minister I’d like to see toppled, Mr. Kenney is at the top of the list. I thank Haley for taking the time to answer the questions, and good luck to her and her campaign!

What made you decide you wanted to run to be the official candidate for the Liberals in your riding of Calgary-Midnapore?

I have always been involved in politics by staying informed, voting, and […]

Former Conservative Finance Minister – the late Jim Flaherty – ruled out dipping into contingency fund last year to balance the books:

Flaherty told CBC News it would be “imprudent” to do so as the fund has frequently proven necessary. “If you do the arithmetic, we could have had a budget balanced by $100,000,” Flaherty said at the time. “I prefer to have a nice clean surplus.”

Inconvenient Comment #3:

Again from Jim Flaherty: this time rejecting dipping into the EI fund to balance the books:

This happened yesterday, but I’ll still comment on it. You might have seen the story where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court took the unusual step of publicly (albeit indirectly) supporting the rebuke of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney for his suggestion a few months back that judges weren’t being deferential enough to the Conservative government:

“I was certainly — and I think all judges were — very pleased when an issue arose earlier this year when a Minister of the Crown seemed to suggest that some judges were insufficiently solicitous to government policy. We were very, very gratified to see your president writing a powerful public letter to the […]

Ellie Kirzner of NOW Magazine takes apart Jason Kenney and his ally in the Toronto Star Rosie DiManno, and their attacks on KAIROS. I’m going to quote a large excerpt, because it’s a good piece:

…So unsettling is the anti-Semitism charge that many are preferring to believe that Kenney really didn’t say what it seems he said. Rosie DiManno in Monday’s Star argues that the minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism didn’t overtly accuse KAIROS of anything but merely opined that the group had taken “a leadership role in the boycott’’ of Israel. That’s the tack the Canada Israel Committee is taking too. When I ask Sara Saber, the organization’s […]

The impact is all very negative, as you would expect. “Canada’s back?”. More like Canada’s disappearing under Harper.

Programs to 6 different countries will be specifically affected by this bit of petty vindictiveness by Harper, Jason Kenney, Bev Oda, and the rest of this disgraceful lot. Specifically, key partners of KAIROS in Columbia, Sudan, The Congo, Indonesia (which, by the way, has a picture of Deepak Obhrai, the Parliamentary Secretary to Foreign Affairs, attending the opening of and being the guest speaker of the first ever human rights school there in July 2009, funded with KAIROS/CIDA money), and Mexico. You can read for yourself the different specifics of the programs; […]

This got passed on to me from the United Church of Canada Twitter feed (yes, I was a bit surprised they use Twitter). They’ve linked to a page over at KAIROS that lists seven things you can do to support KAIROS and try to let the federal Conservatives know you don’t appreciate or support their funding cuts.

I’ll note as an aside that not listed in the members of the Federal Cabinet to contact is Jason Kenney, the Minister of Immigration who set off the firestorm by claiming KAIROS Canada’s funding was cut because they were anti-Israel/anti-Semitic, so I’m slightly curious whether this page was made before Jason Kenney opened […]

As I was hoping they’d do, the member churches that belong to KAIROS Canada are starting to push back against the federal Conservatives and Jason Kenney for his remarks that KAIROS Canada was stopped CIDA funding due to the organization being anti-Semitic or anti-Israel:

The United Church of Canada and other Canadian churches are demanding Prime Minister Stephen Harper explain why one of his cabinet ministers accused them of being anti-Semitic. The United, Catholic and Anglican churches are part of KAIROS, an aid group that was shocked to hear Immigration Minister Jason Kenney say its funding was lifted as part of the Conservatives’ effort to cut off anti-Semitic organizations. “It’s […]

KAIROS Canada has just issued a news release responding to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s statements that CIDA funding was cut to it because of the organization supposedly being anti-Israel/anti-Semitic. I’ve highlighted a main point (or two) in here amongst some other very relevant and troubling issues that KAIROS Canada has brought up. It appears that Minister Kenney is confusing 2 different organizations statements and positions:

The Minister of International Cooperation, Bev Oda, has been telling KAIROS, Parliament and the Canadian people that funding to KAIROS was cut because its work did not fit current Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) priorities of economic growth, food security and children and youth.

While I will talk about anything politically on here, I normally do not discuss matters to do with the Middle East, because in my experience, any attempt at discussing that rationally unfortunately eventually leads one to either getting called a “pro-Zionist” or an “anti-Semitic”. I am going to make an exception here today to discuss something that I find particularly galling: federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s reasoning given over in Jerusalem for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) cutting funding to KAIROS Canada, a multi-denominational Christian aid group that works for social justice causes.

According to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, the reason that KAIROS Canada funding was cut was […]

That title would be in reference to whether Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is perhaps overplaying his hand in this whole question of whether a couple of nannies were not treated well by Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla and/or her family, and politicizing the Department of Immigration in an attempt to help get Dhalla de-elected, and get Jason’s pal Parminder Gill elected to that riding which Dhalla currently represents.

Now, some of you’ll say of COURSE I’d say that or wonder that, being a Liberal blogger and all. Of COURSE other Liberal bloggers are wondering about all of this, because they’re biased too. But, they and I are not the only ones […]